The Hamptons Subway: Week of May 18-24, 2012

Jason Kidd looked sad holding a basketball and sitting alone on the subway between Southampton and Water Mill last Monday. It was the day after his beloved DallasMavericks, the team he piloted to the championships last year, got knocked out of the playoffs by the lowly Oklahoma CityThunder.

SUBWAY DELAYED RE-OPENING LAST TUESDAY

Monday night after the subway shut down for its nightly maintenance, the workers brought out the giant, twirling Roto-Rooter bristle brush they use once a year to clean all the walls, ceilings and floors in the tunnels. The brush is a wonder to behold. It’s 12 feet in diameter and 20 feet long, and attached to the front of a subway car, it’s pig bristles turn corkscrew fashion brushing and brushing as the subway car guides it slowly down the tracks. Attached behind is the swiss shower water cannon car, which washes what the pig brush scrapes off and sends it down the drains rub-a-dub-dub. Call it spring cleaning, call it a miracle, but there was a 20 minute delay in finishing the job before the 7 a.m. reopening and we apologize for it. Still, the straphangers applauded the squeaky clean tunnels when they boarded the cars. “This is the Hamptons,” one of them shouted, pumping his fist in the air.

NO MORE TOKENS

May 15 was the last day that old subway tokens could be brought to the token booths and exchanged for the new swipe cards. Some people on May 16 brought buckets and buckets of still more tokens and just angrily left them on the subway platform for people to trip over. Get over it, people.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALBRECHT SPEER

Last Wednesday was the 100th birthday of AlbrechtSpeer, the classy German architect who designed our headquarters building in Hampton Bays in 1937. He did his best work in Berlin in those years. This is the only work he did in America, a project made from granite imported from Germany just moments before World War II broke out.

COMMISSIONER ASPINALL’S MESSAGE

I know I promised this week I would tell the full story about how I was able to snooker Mayor Bloomberg of New York into buying back the New YorkCity subway system he had sold me last fall for $1. But now my agent tells me he’s sold my account as a book, with the movie rights gone to the WeinsteinBrothers, so my mouth is sealed. All monies I make will go into the coffers of Hampton Subway, after I take my cut, of course.

SUBWAY FRANCHISE NAME

A big problem on Hamptons Subway is that the restaurant chain Subway has units on all the platforms for the hungry straphangers. There is confusion when saying, “I’m going to the Subway,” because of this, but the Commissioner is steadfast that we have to continue to call them that.